1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to agricultural implements, and in particular, to a manually-operated seed dispenser for depositing a predetermined number of seeds into the ground.
2. Information Disclosure Statement
A problem faced by home gardeners is the great amount of back-breaking manual labor required to plant their gardens with seeds such as, for example, corn, beans, peas, and the like. Well-known planting implements include hoes, shovels, trowels, and the like, whose use requires frequent and extended periods of stooping and kneeling. Such effort is difficult if not impossible for elderly or disabled gardeners, who are thus prevented from obtaining the satisfaction, enjoyment, and benefit of planting a garden and harvesting the resulting food and/or creating a beautiful display of flowering plants.
The manual planting of seeds, besides heretofore being strenuous and difficult, typically produces a wide variance in the volume of seeds planted at each planting position along a row, and it is difficult to plant successive hills at fixed distances from one another.
It is therefore desirable to have a garden seeder that allows a selectable metered volume of seeds to be planted, from a standing position of the gardener, in a succession of planting positions along a planting row or furrow, spaced a predetermined distance from a previously-planted hill of seeds. It is additionally desirable that such a garden seeder provide means for creating a depression into the soil for holding the metered volume of seeds, and also provide means for covering the seeds with earth after deposit in the depression, also from a standing position of the gardener.
A preliminary patentability search in Class 111, subclasses 82, 92 and 98, produced the following patents, some of which may be relevant to the present invention: Riordan, U.S. Pat. No. 1,094,595, issued Apr. 28, 1914; Kollenberg, U.S. Pat. No. 1,182,913, issued May 16, 1916, Gourlay, U.S. Pat. No. 1,610,767, issued Dec. 14, 1926; Jett, U.S. Pat. No. 3,097,759, issued Jul. 16, 1963; and Kelly, U.S. Pat. No. 4,218,981, issued Aug. 26, 1980. None of these patents disclose or suggest the present invention.